Smart Charging of Electric Vehicles

Electric cars -  whether pure electric or plug-in hybrid/electric vehicles (PHEV) – use the electric grid to recharge their batteries. Since the forecast for electric vehicles is significant, the potential load on the electric grid could be material, especially considering that home recharging can coincide with peak demand periods.

Smart Grid Consumer Solutions from Trilliant allow for “smart” PHEV charging, the load can be spread throughout the course of the night. Through two-way communication between the grid and electric vehicles, charging profiles can throttle energy demand in accordance with load control programs, which can balance the aggregate demand required to charge all vehicles by time-shifting demand loads throughout the course of a night.

To facilitate smart charging, two-way communications are required from the utilities’ head-end systems to the electric vehicles at the consumers premise. This necessitates the need for both advanced metering in a NAN as well as a HAN communication solution.

The multi-tier Smart Grid architecture from Trilliant provides the necessary components to enable smart charging of electric vehicles. The SecureMesh communications infrastructure provides the two-way communication to enable metering and consumer networking and the UnitySuite Demand-Side Management application provides the demand response, direct load controls, and customization through SOAP-based APIs to enable the future of smart charging of electric vehicles.